The University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s (UTHSC) College of Nursing has announced the appointment of Christopher Lance Coleman, PhD, MS, MPH, FAAN, as the chair and professor of the Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
It was the College of Nursing’s rich history of implementing innovative and progressive educational initiatives that attracted Dr. Coleman to UTHSC. “Additionally, I was impressed with the impeccable clinical services our faculty and students provide to the region, and also the internationally renowned programs of research among the faculty,” he said.
Prior to joining the UTHSC faculty, Dr. Coleman was the director of the Health Equity Collaborative, and the Fagin Term associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, (Penn) School of Nursing. While at Penn, he served as chair of the Faculty Senate, the Biomedical IRB Panel, and the MPH admissions committee in the Perelman School of Medicine. Additionally, he served as the co-director of the former Center of Health Equity Research Center in the School of Nursing.
He received his bachelor of science degree from Walla Walla University in 1986 and a master’s degree from Oregon Health Sciences University in family and child psychiatry in 1991. Dr. Coleman received his PhD with a minor in education from the University of California, San Francisco in 1996, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1998. His area of concentration focused on the quantitative measurement of health-related quality of life in people living with AIDS. Additionally, he earned an MPH from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in 2004, where he focused on the epidemiology of infectious diseases. In 2007, Dr. Coleman was elected to the American Academy of Nursing for his outstanding scientific contributions.
Dr. Coleman has mentored faculty, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, serves on multiple editorial boards, authored two books, published research articles, and served as principal investigator and co-investigator on federal research grants, foundations, and intramural funding.
In the future, Dr. Coleman seeks to continue building upon the pillars of eminent teaching, research, service and clinical practice. “I seek to use shared governance to implement initiatives that will enable faculty and staff to advance the college’s strategic mission to prepare and develop nurse leaders,” he said. “The College of Nursing has a well-established, rich intellectual history and the Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention will use that rich history as leverage to maximize scholarly productivity, increase intramural and extramural funding, and use clinical practice to address and eliminate health disparities affecting the Mid-South region and beyond.”